Kabul, Afghanistan –
“We live in constant fear of suicide attacks,” said Laila, an Afghan
woman who lives in Kandahar city and who visited with us yesterday.
“When will the next one strike and where?”

“Twelve days ago,” she
continued, “a good friend was walking home from the mosque. A four-minute
walk. An IED was detonated, and my friend lost half his face. Another
man lost his leg, and his son lost his leg, too. We live with that kind
of uncertainty, when you don’t know what is going to happen from one
moment to the next.”

Laila’s descriptions of living
with fear and violence in Kandahar contradict the mild U.S. descriptions
of the “security situation” there. “The Taliban do not control
the city,” said Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, in a May 13, 2010,
briefing concerning a “much-anticipated” military operation in Kandahar.
“You can walk around the streets of Kandahar, and there is business
going on. It is a functioning city.”

Compare McChrystal’s blithe
comments with Laila’s experience. “In Kandahar city, you don’t
know what’s going to happen, minute to minute. Every single minute
that we live – if you can call it living – every single second there
is the thought that this is going to be my last second.”

Laila went on to illustrate
this graphically. “A good friend of mine had a ticket to travel to
Canada to visit her mom for a family wedding. She dressed in a burqa
and went to say goodbye to some colleagues. When she returned home,
traveling by rickshaw, she saw a neighbor outside. So she stood for
two minutes to talk to her. In those two minutes, two men on a motorcycle
drove up. One man shot her in the head and killed her, and the other
man drove them away.”

Laila states that this style
of killing – where two men ride a motorcycle and one is responsible
for driving, the other for shooting – has become common in Kandahar.
“At least 300-500 people have been killed in front of their homes,
offices, shopping areas. The guys who killed my friend are still roaming
around the city. No effort was made to find and question them.”

In late September, after months
of “careful and quiet preparation” in Kandahar province, U.S./NATO
forces officially launched what they are calling Operation Dragon
Strike, currently their largest military operation in the country.

The New York Times reported
that winning over Kandahar is crucial to shifting the balance of power
in Afghanistan, and Brig. Gen. Joseph Blotz with the ISAF in
Kabul called it the “most significant military operation” in the
country. Last week, an AP news report from a journalist embedded in
another province declared that “the Kandahar operation has so far
produced stunning results.” And on Nov. 6, an NPR correspondent
confidently stated his expectation that Gen. Petraeus will declare
the Kandahar operation a “big success” when he reports to President
Obama prior to the December “review” of U.S. military efforts in
Afghanistan.

But Laila and her friends and
colleagues haven’t seen any “stunning results” or “big success.”

“Now we hear bombardment
every night, but no communication about it. Is it really Talibs who
are being killed, or ordinary citizens? Women? Children?”

Laila, who operates a business
in Kandahar, used to travel back and forth everyday from her rented
home to her office. “It’s only a three-minute ride,” but because
even that is too risky, “I’ve moved into my office.”

In Kandahar, in August and
September, the Mirwais Hospital received nearly 1,000 patients wounded
by war. These were record high numbers and double the figures from a
year before (International Committee for the Red Cross).

Some people have considered
the management of Operation Dragon Strike a failure because in
response to advance publicity many insurgents left the area ahead of
time, and international forces have met with so little resistance. For
people in Kandahar, however, this hasn’t meant a reprieve. While there
has been less combat on the front lines, U.S. Special Forces are conducting
frequent night raids in the area, breaking into homes, terrorizing families,
violating people’s sense of privacy and honor, and generating deep
anger and resentment. Further, there are assassinations every day related
to politics, business disputes, and the practices of vigilante justice,
all of which frightens people and reminds them of the terrible period
of civil war between 1992 and 1994.

In addition to undiminished
violence, people in Kandahar live with the sour taste and gnawing frustration
of unfulfilled promises of development made by the U.S. and the international
community. Residents in much of Kandahar, we are told by NGO representatives,
have electricity only every third day. Development organizations made
a huge investment in hydroelectric turbines for the Kajaki dam only
to walk away and leave the project unfinished because insecurity has
made the challenge of bringing in materials so daunting and death threats
have driven subcontractors to abandon their efforts – six years of
work with as yet nothing to show for it. Failed projects cause more
than disappointment. Factories in a U.S.-funded industrial park in Kandahar
city sit empty for lack of electricity, the employment possibilities
they hold yet another undelivered promise. Local people see clearly
that development organizations and their staff profit, while leaving
little behind. This, too, builds resentment.

In Kandahar, home to the airfield from which U.S. drones operating in
Afghanistan are launched, local Afghans refer to the pilotless warplanes
as “computer tayarri,” or computer planes. The drones fly overhead
daily, but they don’t see what Laila sees.